Culture is __________ .

Thanks to all of you who have been posting—it is good to see an online culture develop. Some of you mentioned you were required to blog in the past and added that being required to participate soured it for you. I think (know) there are great benefits to writing, reading, forming online dialog, and just getting in and of both the virtual communities and the systems that make it all possible. It works best when it is improvisational, voluntary, and more akin to knowledge sharing.

I noticed Design Observer just reposted an article and comment thread from a decade ago: Culture Is Not Always Popular. I recall the conversation, but it seemed surprisingly new. It is new—there are varying degrees of fresh perspective and historical evidence. Yes, that commenter is a troll and has proven such over the years. Yes, this other pair’s intent and inquiry was and continues to be sincere. Time offers these perspectives and surprises. One of the authors is Jessica Helfand—who we watched and discussed a bit in regard to scrapbooking. Blogs work this way too as they allow a record for rediscovery, recollection, and connection to things we may have thought and said but remembered differently. And in some cases forgot altogether.

Christian Cox, a designer at ETC in New York, posted here last night and this morning we texted at length. He noted how much reading and writing online can change our ideas and encourage us to do one of the best activities that has us sort out what we know and recall where we were when. We also minced about word choice, typos, and appropriate amounts of information for an audience. I am sure I could have done a better job with that where-we-were-when sentence.